


The Artist Sees a Woman

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Dreaming, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Purple Prose, The Artist deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 16:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17646248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: A/N: I was deeply saddened by 'Meal Ticket' and desperately needed to write something where the Artist found happiness instead of slavery. It is still a sad little tale and tragic, but hopefully, it helps anyone as saddened as I was by the ending. <3





	The Artist Sees a Woman

Rosy red of such deadly ambrosia. Two mouths: one struggling for earthy nourishment while the other exhaled pain, life, and voice. The Artist saw the dying woman in the reeds beneath the bridges shaded canopy. Seen she was, but not discerned until his glimpse was worthless.

“There’s a-" but the Impresario delivered him a shove, and like the thunk of the stone before him, he crashed into needling frost which took the form of razored water. The Artist sank, much like the rock, swallowing liquid as biting as the heart that flung him to the bottom. 

He tried to comfort his heavy soul by conceding the loss of that woman on the banks. Her second smile being too broad - more profound than the creek - to cure regardless of his miserable existence.

In life, he had never done more than recite the speeches, poetry and passionate reciting of masters long past, clinging to the grapevines that held such men aloft despite their corporeal forms. A man of nothing but words, could not even muster the casual voice to note a dying woman on the creekbed who was only visible from his own wounded angle. 

In passing… as in life, he was little except space. 

Death had always been a flop audience away. Under the water - surrounded by the opalescent blue of a wintertime estuary - the Artist saw nothing of his own life, not even hatred for the hen; instead, he saw a future that never would be.

An oration of bubbles and lost air transitioned quite swiftly. The curtain of darkness opened onto a stage of dazzling, golden dappled people all watching with rapt attention as he lamented his own hopes and dreams - trials and tribulations. 

The audience descended in an uproar of applause. Acclaims giveth like oxygen. 

The Artist, for the first time in as long as his memory earmarked, smiled for true. His delight narrowed, joining in as the curtains used to but the emptiness did not come. His consciousness centered, and there, at the core of the packed auditorium, sat the most beautiful woman he'd ever chance laid eyes upon. Her two smiles stared up at him; luscious as nectar. 

Snubbing the cold, his smile widened; twitching with a nervous longing. Beneath the warm glow of stage light, his heart raced as his stomach clenched in a tight bow. 

While dying, rather than an owner, the quadriplegic thespian had a manager. He was a scholarly individual of great upstanding and jovial, camaraderie. No grunts of contempt. The two had long discourses on philosophy, dead poets and the profundities of Shakespeare's lexicon, and the second the Artist's manager saw the way his friend smiled at the lady with double burdened happiness… he sent her a letter. 

The Artist discovered love and great companionship. She signified everything he had dreamt of. Witty, well-educated… a caring soul that melted away the ice compacting in his lungs. 

His heart burst beneath her lips each and every time. The first time, there had been perspiration, and baking chills - nerves that bequeathed his vulnerability - but her unspoken acts of unconditional love replaced his qualms thereafter.

Breath ghosted his throat with each good morning and night. A tongue upon his sternum in the evenings. The Artist knew pleasure beneath a woman that did not wear disgust like a glaze after the act of copulation. Through her, the meaning begot the prose uttered by his favorite scholars; a lover's knot, joining of twin souls and... 

... breathed into his ear often times, 'Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie, my love.' 

Children came as he drowned and made love with the woman that bore twin smiles.

More admiration for making him whole. A blushing, fresh face for each limb he never had. His future brimmed with life and kisses; orated stories both original and as ancient as time itself. 

Both stranger, wife and child would sit and watch with tears in their eyes as he recounted stories humanity knew only seldom traversed. And each time, his smile reached further climaxes. 

No longer did the Artist sink for he had touched the summit. No longer did he respond to such ague. A warmth replaced the chill. A blanket of passion in the nights and soft hands across his skin - whispers of clemency and faith in his ear - molded the eclipse. 

Beneath the creek, The Artist felt the lingering warmth of tears slip into the impenetrable, icy black. A purpose. A prayer. It vanished as he did… a dream that had not an opportunity. A life… unlived, passed. 

On the other side, perhaps, his fate would be kinder.

‘My body is injured, And sadly disordered, All by a young woman, My own heart’s delight…’

The sunset carriage drummed with wheels so sturdy that the Artist barely felt the vibrations flowing up the soles of his shoes, to the knots of his knees and the skinny width of his thighs. He blinked, feeling nothing of the cold in his ribs or of the ice in his lungs.

Crisp linen black looked up at him, and with horror, awe, comfort, and fear, he thumbed the iron-pressed crease down his leg. Blood surged beneath real limbs. Fingers bent and bowed with tendon, artery, and ligament.

Beside him, on the bench to his right sat the lady from the creek bank. Dead as she was, the woman wore one solid smile in acceptance of the soothing Irishman’s tune. An angel waxing a lullaby or perhaps nothing so kind. Mayhaps it was the angel that listened to such a bitter song. She; the winged maiden.

Despondent, the Irishman sang… ‘But now I’m cut down, In the height of my prime.’

His wife in a life that never did come, turned to him. She saw him as the whole man he’d always dreamed to be. 

Her smile bewitched him. As elegant and charming as she’d been in his illusions. And, in the glaze across her eyes, he saw a similar longing of unlived futures as though death came for them in the same breath, giving them a shared glimpse of what might have been had life not dealt them the mummer's hand. 

‘Bunches of roses…’ the Irishman lamented softly.

The Artist turned at the hip to a wife he’d never known and lifted his hand of pale fingers gently betwixt their souls. Her smile rose like a crimson cut, so artful as the one that brought her on the trail before their trials and rested her soft, cold hand in his own until their fingers threaded; gradually warmed.

‘As they go along…'

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm only able to bust out small things right now it seems, but I had a vicious need to write this so I did. Hope those that read it enjoyed it. Any and all typos are my own. If you have the time, please let me know what you thought. Thanks!
> 
> (also, if you like Coen films, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is one of their best in my opinion)
> 
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